Thus Bad Begins

by Javier Marías

  This, or something like it, is what Muriel must have thought when I finally had a stroke of luck and could provide him with information about what Van Vechten had done during the years when he’d behaved so well towards the people suffering persecution or reprisals under the Franco regime, and when he’d gained a reputation as a compassionate, understanding man who had refused to take any money for treating the whooping cough or measles or chickenpox of the children of those struggling to scrape a living. It’s true, however, that we always arrive late in people’s lives, indeed, we generally arrive late for everything: Muriel had decided not to hear what I had to say, not to listen to what I’d chanced to discover, whether I’d discovered it entirely by chance or thanks to my own persistence (‘I don’t want you to tell me about it, to test my curiosity. Keep it to yourself, say nothing,’ he said) and he had ordered me to cease my investigations and my wheedlings, even to abandon my outings with the Doctor, albeit gradually. However, I found it impossible not at least to try to get him to listen, to tell him the story I’d heard not from Van Vechten, but from another doctor, a younger man, Dr Vidal Secanell, a family friend and my friend too, even though we saw each other only occasionally. If the story was true, it would have been inconceivable that Van Vechten would have openly admitted it to me, not even on a night of heavy drinking or endless boasting or contrite confessions (the latter was hard to imagine); we could have gone out to discos and bars and so on thousands of times and have developed a profound sense of camaraderie, but still not a word about what he had done would have left his lips; it was the kind of thing you hope will remain hidden for ever, a secret you will take with you to the grave, although we all know which of our secrets would be best discreetly buried, if it were up to us. We don’t, however, always get our way: as soon as someone else intervenes – and someone will always intervene, be it an accomplice, an intermediary, a witness or a victim – rumours, however subterranean, will start to spread, and nothing is ever completely safe. In the light of that story, Van Vechten had already told me a lot, and although I did pass on his words to Muriel, they weren’t enough: ‘And nothing gives one more satisfaction than when a girl doesn’t want to do it, but can’t say No. And I can assure you most of them do want to do it, once they realize they’re obliged to.’ Of course I couldn’t understand the meaning of those words without knowing the story I was told by Vidal, who was scornful of and shocked by my friendship with Van Vechten. Muriel, on the other hand, would have understood, because he would probably have been told the same story by the person who had come to him or, rather, by a former lover, ‘the love of my life, as people say’.

  It didn’t happen at once, but neither did I have to wait long for an opportunity to tell him. I mean that it happened immediately after Muriel’s return from Barcelona. He came home only a few days later, looking very angry and annoyed and bearing bad news, an insult. Towers had got rid of him, sacked him, had refused to allow him to finish filming, and had turned instead to Jesús Franco to see if he, with his sans-façon and talent for juggling multiple projects, could bring the film into safe harbour. Jesús had said Yes, but that he wouldn’t be able to take over for another week and a half, having other business to finish. The amazing thing is that he was able to find time at all, because I see from the Internet that no fewer than thirteen feature-length films by him are dated 1980 or 1981. And his trusted friend Don Sharp was busy too. Towers couldn’t have Herbert Lom and the other actors twiddling their thumbs for another ten days and so he had sent them all home and suspended the production for the moment. Filming was never resumed, which is why, as I said, the title doesn’t appear in any filmography and remains unfinished, a ghost work. I asked Muriel what exactly had happened, but he was in no mood for giving explanations.

  ‘We had a falling-out. Harry’s a slave-driver, of course, but I can hardly claim I didn’t know that already,’ was all he would say. Then he had the decency to add: ‘In large part, it’s my fault. And Beatriz’s, needless to say, she couldn’t have chosen a worse time for her “performance”, and I fell for it; she really chose her moment. But don’t ask me any more questions, I don’t want to talk about it. Oh, and you’d better start thinking about looking for another job, Juan.’ The succession of verbs indicated a certain delicacy, or a desire to break the news gently and not put me under any pressure. ‘I doubt I’ll be offered another project for a while, and I’m afraid you’re not going to be needed. But there’s no rush, I don’t want to cause you any problems. You can stay here until you find something else, and when you do, tell me when it would suit you to leave, I leave it in your hands. I just felt it was fair to give you plenty of notice.’

  His bad mood lasted for weeks. All consideration or concern, his sudden show of affection (if you can call it that), all solicitude ended. Instead, he was abusive and loathsome to her on the slightest excuse, as if he regretted the truce he’d called after the fright she gave him at the Hotel Wellington, after the panic that had obliged him to go haring down Calle Velázquez and suffer the indignity of having to run even that short distance. Fortunately, he had few opportunities to wound her, because he was rarely at home; every day he summoned the telephonist-cum-accounts-clerk-cum-representative-cum-housekeeper, Mercedes by name, with whom he shared his office. He went there straight after breakfast, but I have no idea what he did or if he stayed there. I had the impression that Towers’s insulting behaviour and his own foul mood had spurred him on, for far from giving up, he was in furious pursuit of finance for another film; perhaps he and Mercedes spent all day making phone calls and arranging meetings with more curers of ham and more breeders of fighting bulls, with canners of cockles and representatives of drinks manufacturers, whose drinks he promised would appear in every shot, with the label clearly visible, or perhaps he would again resort to the imperial Cecilia Alemany, to try to win her over with some clever and less pedantic tactic, as well as courting all kinds of professional and amateur producers, the former all thieving megalomaniacs, the latter all delusional megalomaniacs. Perhaps he spent the day chasing after such individuals. He didn’t usually come home until late anyway, sometimes not until the small hours (poker games and nightclubs, I assumed), and he rarely took me with him. I didn’t know if he preferred me not to see him humbling himself before the wealthy or if he wanted to get used to no longer having me there, or if his anger also extended to me, because I had been the unwitting instrument of his wife’s salvation, perhaps he thought she might finally have succeeded on the third attempt. There were times when it occurred to me that Muriel would have liked to see her dead. This was doubtless a passing phase, but while it lasted, his fury and spite only intensified.

  What there couldn’t be, though, was any suspicion on his part that my relations with Beatriz had changed, because they didn’t change at all. After that insomniac night, even before Muriel came back, Beatriz treated me exactly as if nothing had happened or as if that night had never existed. As though she had retreated into the painting again, into that flat, long-past dimension, and had never become flesh – texture and tremor – nor had pressed foot, thigh or breast against me in my present dimension. And I never dared to attempt another approach or to mention what had occurred: I sensed that, if I did, I might be confronted by a response along the discouraging, disconcerting lines of: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Juan. You must have dreamed it, young De Vere. You youngsters tell yourself such stories. Don’t be silly.’ I didn’t find this so very hard to accept. Although I treasured and still retain the images and sensations of what went on in my little room and in the kitchen, I knew that certain looks and attitudes were not allowed and would be deemed inappropriate given my age, position or rank, and it wasn’t that difficult to give them up, to dismiss rather than repress them, and to adopt a veiled, neutral gaze. Beatriz gradually went back to her normal life, resumed her teaching, her outings with Rico or with Roy or with her women friends, from whom she managed to conceal that suicidal episode, telling
them that she had been away for a few weeks with Muriel in Barcelona. She also resumed her solitary walks, smartly dressed and in her high heels – the very image of misery, I always thought – but I felt less inclined to follow her, less curious, because I already had what I wanted, although up until then I had never admitted to myself that I did want what I now had – sometimes we discover this only once we have it. I imagined – no, I was sure – that she would continue occasionally to visit Van Vechten at the Sanctuary of Darmstadt – there was now an added link between them, that of saviour and saved, although not necessarily a very alluring one – and whoever it was in Plaza del Marqués de Salamanca, or to drive to El Escorial or La Granja or Gredos on her Harley-Davidson; on some afternoons, I would watch her from the balcony as she rode off. She was, it seemed to me, doomed.

  Needless to say, following that night of fantasy, I tried to detect any changes in the behaviour or looks or words of the three children or of Flavia, to see which of them might have been the owner of those fleet, barefoot steps, while I was inside Beatriz, deep inside without a condom or anything; as I said, AIDS was unknown at the time and it never occurred to anyone to take such prosaic precautions. I noticed no change in any of them – no hostility or reproach or distrust, no words open to interpretation – although I did occasionally have the feeling that the girls were looking at me with more curiosity or attention than usual, but that might just have been my imagination or simply that I’d never before stopped to look at them looking at me, as I then did. It was not so very odd that a couple of adolescent girls should fancy a slightly older young man who spent so much time in their home. There was nothing strange either in them having a secret crush on him, that’s perfectly normal.

  I bumped into José Manuel Vidal one day when Professor Rico had dragged me off to keep him company until his lunch date with two or three academicians whom he judged to be particularly stupid and with whom, for that same reason, he had to be helpful and flattering as long as his patience lasted, which was not very long at all, though he would probably achieve exactly the opposite effect and they would all be sworn enemies by the time dessert was served. These were academicians from the Real Academia Española, of which he planned to be a member within, at most, six years, despite his relative youth; there were other academicians whom he greatly respected, and since he considered them to be intelligent people, he assumed they would admire him equally unreservedly and so felt there was no need for him to win them round. He had dropped in at the apartment to while away the time, but finding that Eduardo was at his office and Beatriz was out teaching, he persuaded me to join him for an aperitif at the Balmoral, although I can’t remember now if that was or is in Calle de Hermosilla or in Calle Ayala, or if it closed a few years ago or remains open, because it’s been many years since I sat at its tables or its bar.

  The Professor was in full flow, heaping elaborate insults on some of his Barcelona colleagues (some of whom he had once favoured, but now regretted doing so), when Vidal came over to us, friendly and smiling and slightly teasing, as was his way, at least with me. He was about seven years older than me (so he would have been about thirty at the time) and bore a remarkable resemblance to Paul McCartney: his nose, cheeks, even his eyes were rather like the ex-Beatle’s, except that his skin was a little lined or pockmarked. His Republican family had always been good friends with mine, especially with my aunt and uncle, and he and I had known each other since we were children or, rather, since I was a child and he was an adolescent. The difference in age meant that, while we had never considered ourselves to be friends exactly, that same age difference allowed him to treat me in a fraternal fashion, taking on the role of older brother. He was like one of those people you’ve known all your life and with whom you tend not to make any special arrangements to meet up, but with whom there’s always an immediate sense of deep trust and familiarity whenever you do run into them. His grandfather, an ophthalmologist and lawyer (the first career, oddly enough, didn’t earn him enough to live on in the 1920s and 30s), had ended up in prison at the end of the Civil War, and on his release, he was further punished by being banned from exercising either of his two professions, and so in order to survive, he had to set up one of those agencies that helps people deal with labyrinthine Spanish bureaucracy. His grandmother, for her part, had had all her hair shaved off before being sent to clean the Falangists’ latrines. As for their son, Vidal Secanell’s father, he had been charged with sedition because, as a very young man, he had fought for the Republican side; luckily for him, though, the case against him was dismissed. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, he had set up a branch in Mexico of the record company Hispavox and made a fortune, which meant that he could send Vidal to a good school and to study medicine in Houston, which served him very well when it came to working towards his specialism, cardiology. Despite his family antecedents, Vidal had got on well and met with no difficulties, thanks to hard work, efficiency and a certain astuteness, that is, an ability to dissemble when necessary and not to antagonize those people he despised for professional or political reasons. Unlike Rico, who gloried in proud insolence or frank impertinence or gleeful arrogance, Vidal was one of those people who could put any antipathies, not to mention moral judgements, on ice. Such people reserve such judgements for when they’re needed and bring them out at the propitious moment. And I clearly constituted a propitious moment, even if only because of our long fraternal acquaintance.

  ‘Well, I’m very glad to see you in better company than of late. I was beginning to get worried,’ he said almost as soon as he saw me. And holding out his hand to the Professor, who often appeared in the newspapers and even occasionally on the television, he added warmly: ‘An honour to meet you, Professor Rico, author of Small Man’s World.’ Vidal was well read, or at least attentive and with a retentive mind.

  Rico held out one languid hand (he had a cigarette in the other) without bothering to get up, and could not resist correcting Vidal:

  ‘You mean Man’s Small World. Why on earth would I write about a small man? I leave that to the author of Tom Thumb or The Hobbit, assuming you know what that is.’ He was already being rude, or heading in that direction. The Hobbit was not particularly well known in Spain at the time. ‘And you, sir, are?’

  I made the necessary introductions. Vidal sat down with us, abandoning the two men and two women, possibly colleagues, whom he had been with at the bar. He waved his almost empty glass at a passing waiter, indicating that he should bring another beer to our table, where he was clearly intending to stay for a while.

  ‘What do you mean “in better company”?’ I asked anxiously, the usual response to a brotherly reproach. ‘We haven’t seen each other lately, in fact, not for ages.’

  ‘You may not have seen me, but I’ve seen you, two or three times. And the reason I didn’t come over or make myself visible was precisely because I wanted to avoid the utter bastard you were with. What are you doing going around with a man like that? It’s one thing me having dealings with the man, because we worked at the same clinic and he was a colleague, but you don’t even have that excuse.’

  Then the penny dropped. Vidal must have seen me with Van Vechten on café terraces, in discos or bars. As I mentioned earlier, in 1980, the whole of Madrid went out at night, regardless of age, respectability or profession.

  I was slightly put out, but only slightly, after all, my mission, now cancelled, had been to ascertain more or less whether the Doctor was what Vidal had just said he was, or had been in the remote past. I was about to bombard him with questions and listen to his answers, but Rico, for whom the penny had not yet dropped, got in before me, filled with a doubtless prurient curiosity: